Tech Yoda's Tip of the Week: Tracking Changes in Word

So your colleague sent you a document that you are collaborating on and wants you to edit it, eh?  Well, if you don't like them very much, then by all means, use strikethrough, highlighting, and red text to make all your edits.  That will be a fun project for them to clean up that mess and get a final product.  However, if you happen to like your colleague, then boy do I have a tip for you!

For those of you that are reading this and have already tuned out because you know how to track changes, skip down to advanced options and see if those are more helpful.

Tracking changes in Word lets you edit the text while keeping track of any changes you make so that the person you return it to can review and then accept or decline your changes.  On the Review tab in Word, near the center of the page, is a button labeled "Track Changes".  Before making any edits, click this button.

The "Balloons" button will let you decide whether your changes are shown right in the text or whether they are shown off to the side in comment bubbles.  The most popular option (and one I encourage you to stick with), is the one called "Show only comments and formatting in balloons".

When you are done making all of your edits, make sure the dropdown on the Reviewer tab says "Final Showing Markup", then save it and send it to your collaborator.  They will be able to right-click on each change you've made (which are obvious because Word has colored and marked them that way), and decide whether to accept your revision or revert to the original text.  When they are done, and the document is done, there will be no more markup, and they can save the document as the final version.

Advanced options:

• Click the down arrow under "Track Changes".  "Change Tracking Options" will let you customize minute details about how it tracks the changes--colors, markup, formatting, balloons, etc.
• Click the down arrow under "Track Changes".  "Change User Name" will let you check to make sure your name is set up how you want it so if a group of people are editing together, you can each see whose edits are whose.
• Ever find that when you receive a document that has had changes made, you accept them all and then have to go fix a bunch of formatting (or reduce the length) because the editor couldn't tell what he or she was messing up as they edited?  Do your collaborators a favor, and click "Track Changes" and then change the dropdown to say "Final".  You won't see your changes being tracked, so you can see how long the final document will be, whether the spacing is messed up, or any other formatting-related items that you wouldn't see otherwise.  When you're done, switch it back to "Final Showing Markup", and you'll see all the changes you've made.
• If you think you've accepted or rejected all the changes you saw but there are still mysterious marks on the page that you can't get rid of, try turning on the Reviewing Pane to see what changes it lists for the document--then you'll know exactly what you've missed.
• Use the "Previous" and "Next" buttons to move between changes.  This can also help with mystery changes that you can't get rid of.
• Want to see the changes of just one reviewer?  Click on "Show Markup" and then scroll down to Reviewers--you can select from the list which reviewer you want to see changes for.
• Did the changes come from a supervisor or authority and you just want to accept them all?  Click the arrow under "Accept" and choose "Accept all changes in document".